‘Crazy' luxury tax is disaster for Britain, warns the King's tailor
'The impact on our US business is significant.' So says Anda Rowland, proprietor of the King's tailor, Anderson & Sheppard, on the subject of Donald Trump's tariffs. In particular, the president's new taxes have knocked the company's hitherto thriving ready-to-wear online sales to America.
But the US tariffs are not the number one problem affecting the business. That accolade goes to the decision by Britain's previous Tory government in 2021 to axe the longstanding VAT exemptions on purchases by international buyers, which continues to hurt London's luxury goods sector. The policy, dubbed the 'luxury tax' or the 'tourist tax', has been blamed for driving wealthy foreign shoppers away from London and to rival hubs such as Paris and Milan.
'It's an absolute disaster,' says Rowland, whose business works with 60 suppliers from across the UK's textiles industry. 'VAT is the killer. It was crazy, because it's a discretionary spend and people can find something similar somewhere else.'
Fortunately, as she is quick to point out, what her business does isn't easily replicated elsewhere. Founded in 1906, Anderson & Sheppard is renowned for its 'English drape' tailoring and counts Cary Grant, Rudolph Valentino, Lawrence Olivier and Fred Astaire among its notable historical clients. (It also made that fuchsia tuxedo worn by James Bond star Daniel Craig at the premiere of No Time To Die in 2021.)
But the shop's most famous client today is undoubtedly the King. His Majesty has been a customer since the early 1990s and granted the business a royal warrant in 2011.
'The King is amazing,' enthuses Rowland, describing the thrill of seeing him wearing one of their suits. 'His Majesty is a great ambassador and also, on another level, he's helping us to improve our business practices,' noting that applying for a royal warrant requires applicants to meet a swathe of business and environmental standards.
Praising the Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales for their role in helping to fly the flag for companies such as hers, Rowland confirms that when it comes to the King '80pc of what we do is repairs and alterations'.
Anderson & Sheppard's rich history and reputation, and the support of the Royal family, have helped to attract customers despite the luxury tax.
Fortunately, its core bespoke business is less affected by the US tariffs because much of it takes place in person in London. Affluent Americans fly in for fittings, negating the need for sending suits cross-border without their owners.
'Touch wood, we are extremely lucky,' says Rowland.
Rowland, 55, took over the family-owned Anderson & Sheppard 20 years ago in 2005, after a career at luxury cosmetics at names including Dior.
Her father, Tiny Rowland, the buccaneering Lonrho tycoon and one-time owner of The Observer who died in 1998, was an Anderson & Sheppard customer and acquired a controlling 80pc share in the business in the 1970s after being approached by cutters seeking a buyout partner.
When Anda took charge, her first task was to manage the company's move from its historical home on Savile Row – the lease was up and the building's owner was redeveloping the property – to new premises around the corner on Old Burlington Street. Successfully managing the transplantation after 99 years on the Row could not have been easy.
'The moment it really changed was when the first long-standing customer came into the new shop and said, 'Oh, wow, this is nice,'' she recalls. 'And then from that moment on, confidence was well established.'
Looking back, she says that being 'an outsider' to the Row was useful, and I suspect it informed her next move too. In 2012, she launched the company's first ready-to-wear range and opened a dedicated shop around the corner on Clifford Street – Anderson & Sheppard Haberdashery.
Here you can buy socks for £30 or off-the-peg trousers, suits or coats priced at anything up to the low thousands of pounds. The garments are predominantly from the UK, the intention being to complement the bespoke tailoring business by supplying items
for the rest of a customer's wardrobe but also to provide a lower price of entry to the brand (after all, a bespoke suit costs upwards of £6,000).
Rowland brings a business acumen doubtlessly informed by close observation of her late father at work as well as her own business experience and time spent studying for an MBA at Insead in Paris. Asked to list her main achievements over 20 years at the helm, her first is apprenticeships.
'When I arrived we really didn't have many apprentices. We didn't have succession.' This was dangerous when it takes four to five years to train a suit maker or a fabric cutter. Now the business has seven apprentices in its 32-strong workforce. 'That, I think, is one of the biggest achievements.'
Her second biggest achievement has been broadening the customer base: 'When I joined we were reliant on 40-50 people ordering quite a bit. Now we have more customers ordering less.'
New bespoke clients
These days the company recruits around three new bespoke clients a week – either through the ready-to-wear shop or via the extensive trunk tours of the US and Far East. Sales were up 8pc on the year.
Americans account for 42pc of bespoke sales, compared to 35pc from the UK, 18pc in Europe and 5pc in the rest of the world.
This year, before Trump announced his tariffs, Anderson & Sheppard was forecasting £7m turnover, with the aim of reaching £10m by around 2027. Crucially, growth must be accomplished while staying true to the firm's heritage.
'The biggest achievement is not having changed the spirit of Anderson & Sheppard – that our long-standing customers still feel that it's the same, the same ethos, the same love and attention to detail,' Rowland says.
This has helped by staff retention, says Rowland, for which they're 'probably the best in Savile Row'.
For all this, Rowland acknowledges much of what they do doesn't quite make sense. 'Who would set up manufacturing in one of the world's most expensive retail areas?' she laughs. 'I mean, you'd have to be mad with the business rates, the rents.'
But this again was also part of the rationale for the ready-to-wear shop and her strategy for the future. 'This side of the business can expand,' she explains of the haberdashery. 'But it's also about the long term, to make sure that we can continue doing what we do that we consider to be the best in the world, to stabilise the hand-making.'
Looking ahead, Rowland wants to grow online ready-to-wear sales, which account for around 10pc of turnover. 'The smartest thing we can do now is to improve our online offering,' she says. After that she hopes to open a second haberdashery shop in New York, subject to an anticipated improvement in US-UK trade terms.
At the heart of Rowland's approach is the need for the business to remain profitable in order retain and motivate staff. 'It's got to be a success, and it should be,' says Rowland. 'What we make is really, really good.'
The secret, she believes, is to move at a gentle pace. 'You don't want to stress a business like this – there's no need. We're not looking to sell out to some private equity firm and to get minimum numbers and [to] take it on and trash it.' On the contrary, she says, it's a case of 'slowly, slowly, with everybody on board.'
As to Rowland's requests of the Government, aside from restoring tax-free shopping, she says textiles companies are struggling with a shortage of skilled workers – a consequence of the Brexit travel restrictions. The recent rise in employers' National Insurance contributions is another headwind the industry didn't need.
Despite all this, the proprietor of Anderson and Sheppard is optimistic for the future of her business and Savile Row, too.
'It's world class, Savile Row,' says Rowland. 'What we're doing is a small, tiny industry, but we're first in it.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scottish Sun
an hour ago
- Scottish Sun
Firm linked to bra tycoon Michelle Mone begins court battle over dodgy Covid kit
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A FIRM linked to bra tycoon Michelle Mone has begun a court battle to keep £122million it received for dodgy Covid protection kit. UK health chiefs are suing PPE Medpro — which Baroness Mone, 53, and her husband Doug Barrowman, 60, both from Glasgow, had denied for years they were involved with 3 A firm linked to bra tycoon Michelle Mone will appear in court Credit: Corbis 3 The bra tycoon and husband Doug Barrowman Credit: Getty 3 Michelle Mone ahead of the State Opening of Parliament Credit: PA The High Court in London was told 25million surgical gowns had been rejected as unsuitable for the NHS as it was deemed 'non-sterile' with 'invalid technical labelling'. It was later revealed that Baroness Mone had lobbied Tory ministers on behalf of the consortium. Both deny wrongdoing, as do Medpro over gowns supplied in 2020. Paul Stanley KC, for the Department of Health and Social Care, said 'initial contact with the firm came through Baroness Mone' and she remained 'active throughout'. But he added her communications were 'not part of this case', which was 'about compliance'. PPE Medpro won two contracts worth over £200million via the UK Government's 'VIP lane' procurement process. TELLY HOST'S SHOCK By Matt Bendoris BBC host Laura Kuenssberg has revealed the interview that 'sticks' with her the most is when Michelle Mone confessed to being a liar. Scots bra tycoon Mone spent two years fiercely denying through an army of lawyers any involvement with the firm PPE Medro, which had earned over £200million worth of Government contracts to supply face masks and surgical gowns during the Covid pandemic. But in 2023 it was revealed that the Tory life peer and her three adult children had received £29million from the company via her second husband Doug Barrowman. That led to a 'Prince Andrew-style' TV showdown with the politics presenter on her weekly show Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Appearing alongside Barrowman, 60, Baroness Mone, 53, made the jaw-dropping confession: 'I can't see what we've done wrong. Lying to the press is not a crime.' Read more HERE It was later revealed Mr Barrowman had received more than £65million in profits from the contracts. And he confirmed he transferred £29million from the firm into a trust benefiting Baroness Mone and her three children. Neither the Tory peer nor her husband are expected to give evidence during the trial. The UK Government is seeking to recover the costs of the contract plus transport and storage expenses. Trial continues. Carol Vorderman reignites feud with ex-pal Michelle Mone in furious rant on This Morning Meanwhile Mone's ex-lawyer has denied telling her to lie about links to a scandal-hit firm. Jonathan Coad insisted the Scots bra tycoon's allegation that he did was 'not true'. Baroness Mone, 53, blamed him for her three-year refusal to confirm her connection to PPE Medpro — given £200million for Covid protection kit and now being probed by cops. Mr Coad, 67, said: 'I did not advise her she should keep her involvement secret. "The suggestion she did so by taking the advice of her lawyers is just not true. "To have Baroness Mone make allegations against me of serious impropriety was potentially very damaging."
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
How can ‘sanction' mean two opposing things?
Sir Keir Starmer said 'he could 'not imagine' the circumstances in which he would sanction a new referendum' on Scottish independence, the Times reported the other day. The Mirror said Amazon 'has agreed to sanction businesses that boost their star ratings with bogus reviews'. So we find sanction being used with completely opposite meanings: 'give permission' and 'enact a penalty to enforce obedience to a law'. The latter sense was extended after the first world war to cover economic or military action against a state as a coercive measure. That is the use we daily find applied to action, or the lack of it, against Russia. The diverging meanings both go back to the Latin noun sanctio, deriving from the verb sancire 'to render sacred', hence 'inviolable'. Such a sanctio came to mean a decree, as in that obscure beast of history, the pragmatic sanction, which looks neither pragmatic or like a sanction. The phrase had a good run for its money, though, labelling a decree attributed to St Louis of France against the Papacy in 1268 and a decree by Charles III of Spain in 1759, granting the crown of the Two Sicilies to his son. I would describe as an anxiety dream the thought of having to write about either. Here, pragmatic meant 'to do with affairs of state', a development of the ancient Greek word that, via Latin, also gives us practical. In English pragmatic acquired the meaning 'practical' only in the mid 19th century, allowing the Americans C.S. Peirce and William James to harness pragmatism to describe a kind of philosophy. As for sanction, it is now also deployed to label the removal or reduction of social benefits. In February this year, 5.5 per cent of claimants were being sanctioned. There is, too, the architect of Dublin's Heuston station (often misprinted as Euston station): Sancton Wood (often misprinted as Sanction Wood).
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
Imperialism still overshadows our intellectual history
Peter Watson begins his survey of the history of ideas in Britain with the assertion that the national mindset (which at that time was the English mindset) changed significantly after the accession of Elizabeth I. His book – a guide to the nature of British intellectual curiosity since the mid-16th century – begins there, just as England had undergone a liberation from a dominant European authority: the shaking off of the influence of the Roman Catholic church and the advent of the Reformation, and the new opportunities that offered for the people. He describes how a culture based largely on poetry and on the court of Elizabeth then redirected the prevailing intellectual forces of the time. This affected not just literature (Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson) but also helped develop an interest in science that grew remarkably throughout the next few centuries. The 'imagination' of Watson's title is not merely the creative artistic imagination, but also that of scientists and inventors and, indeed, of people adept at both. The book is, according to its footnotes, based on secondary sources, so those well read in the history of the intellect in Britain since the Reformation will find much that is familiar. There is the odd surprise, such as one that stems from the book's occasional focus on the British empire and the need felt today to discuss its iniquities. Watson writes that the portion of the British economy based on the slave trade (which must not be conflated with empire) was between 1 per cent and 1.4 per cent. He also writes that for much of the era of slavery the British had a non-racial view of it, since their main experience of the odious trade was of white people being captured by Barbary pirates and held to ransom. While this cannot excuse the barbarism endured by Africans shipped by British (and other) slavers across the Atlantic, it lends some perspective to a question in serious danger of losing any vestige of one. Watson does not come down on one side or the other in the empire debate, eschewing the 'balance sheet' approach taken by historians such as Nigel Biggar and Niall Ferguson; but he devotes too much of the last section of his book to the question, when other intellectual currents in the opening decades of the 21st century might have been more profitably explored, not least the continuing viability of democracy. Earlier on, he gives much space to an analysis of Edward Said, and questions such as whether Jane Austen expressed her antipathy to slavery sufficiently clearly in the novel Mansfield Park. But then some of Watson's own analyses of writers and thinkers are not always easily supported. He is better on the 18th century – dealing well with the Scottish enlightenment (giving a perfectly nuanced account of Adam Smith) and writers such as Burke and Gibbon – than he appears to be on the 19th. He gives Carlyle his due, but cites an article in a learned American journal from 40 years ago to justify his claim that Carlyle's 'reputation took a knock' in 1849 with the publication of his Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question. Watson says readers were offended by the use of the term 'Quashee' to describe a black man. They may well, if so, have been unsettled by the still less palatable title that the Discourse was subsequently given, which was The Nigger Question: it appeared thus in a 1853 pamphlet and in the Centenary Edition of Carlyle's works in 1899. That indicates the Discourse did Carlyle's reputation no lasting harm at the time, whatever it may have done since. In seeking to pack so much into fewer than 500 pages of text, Watson does skate over a few crucial figures. Some of his musings on empire might have been sacrificed to make more space for George Orwell, for example. A chapter in whose title his name appears features just one brief paragraph on him, about Homage to Catalonia, and later there is a page or so on Animal Farm, which says nothing new. Of Orwell's extensive and mould-breaking journalism there is nothing – somewhat surprising in a book about the British imagination when dealing with one of its leading exponents of the past century. Watson emphasises scientific discovery and innovation, and the effect on national life and ideas caused by the Industrial Revolution. These are all essential consequences of our intellectual curiosity, and he is right to conclude that the historic significance of Britain in these fields is immense. He includes league tables of Nobel prizewinners by nation in which Britain shows remarkably well. But these prizes are not the only means by which the contribution to civilisation and progress by a people are measured. There are notable omissions. Although Watson talks about the elitist nature of 'high culture' – such as Eliot and The Waste Land – he does not discuss how far the British imagination, and the British contribution to world civilisation, might have advanced had we taken the education of the masses more seriously earlier. We were, until the Butler Education Act of 1944, appalling at developing our human resources, and have not been much better since. It is surprising that there is no discussion of British music, one of the greatest fruits of the imagination of the past 150 years. And there is no analysis of the role of architecture, which, given its impact and its centrality to many people's idea of themselves as British, surely merited examination. The book shows extensive and intelligent reading, but trying to cram so much information and commentary into one volume has not been a complete success, or resulted in something entirely coherent.
